People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
The Coming of Wisdom with TimeThough leaves are many, the root is one,Through all the lying days of my youthI swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;Now I may wither into the truth.
It was at the moment of the fall of day when every man may pass as handsome and every woman as comely.
I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behindIn balance with this life, this death.
The innocent and the beautifulHave no enemy but time;Arise and bid me strike a matchAnd strike another till time catch;(In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz)
But he calls down a blessing on the blossom of the may, Because it comes in beauty, and in beauty blows away.
Is this my dream, or the truth?O would that we had metWhen I had my burning youth;But I grow old among dreams,A weather-worn, marble tritonAmong the streams.
Nor dread nor hope attendA dying animal;A man awaits his endDreading and hoping all.
Before me floats an image, man or shade,Shade more than man, more image than a shade;For Hades’ bobbin bound in mummy-clothMay unwind the winding path;A mouth that has no moisture and no breathBreathless mouths may summon;(Byzantium)
It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is